Slater Puts The FRK Design Through its Paces at Surf Ranch – The GOAT and shaper Dan Mann talk about the small-wave performance board that nearly wasn’t

Fast-forward 2 years and Slater rediscovered the rounded-pin iteration while looking for a loaner for a friend, and next thing you know he’s riding it himself and realizing he’d been sleeping on his new favorite design for 2 years.

Press play to hear more about how the design came to be, or if you just want to see where the tires hit the pavement, skip to the 6:15 mark, where Slater goes to town on The FRK at Surf Ranch.

I guess you could say that vindication is the theme of the edit above, in which Kelly Slater and shaper Dan Mann give the backstory and break down the performance characteristics of Mann’s almost-overlooked FRK model.

Apparently, Mann made a few versions of the board with various tail types, but after Slater encountered some strange sensations through turns on the squash, he never bothered with the rounded pin.